Land Speed Record

The current land speed record stands at 1,223 kilometres per hour but Roscoe McGlashan wants to go even faster and he has a rocket-powered dream machine that might just let him do it.

Broadcast:
Thu 3 Jun 2010, 12:00am

Published:
Thu 3 Jun 2010, 12:00am

Transcript

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NARRATION

Speed is exciting, an addictive thing for some. But this city is home to a man whose taken speed addiction to a whole new level.

Dr Graham Phillips

This is a typical suburban street on Perth's northern beaches. Now people build their big houses here, their big garages. But check out what this guy has in his garage. Ah that's the famous Rosco.

Rosco McGlashan

Ah Graham, how are you mate?

Dr Graham Phillips

You've got a rocket in your garage here?

Rosco McGlashan

Come and have a look.

NARRATION

Rosco McGlashan is building a rocket-powered car. If all works out, it will make him the fastest man on wheels.

Rosco McGlashan

It's the world's most powerful car, 200 thousand horse power or 62 thousand pounds of thrust, it makes about the power of two and a half Hornet aircraft, very powerful.

Dr Graham Phillips

This car has been designed to travel from zero to 1,600 kilometres an hour, that's almost one and half times the speed of sound, in just 20 seconds. In fact it could have been designed to accelerate even more quickly, but then the wheels would have trouble keeping up and they wouldn't stay stuck to the ground.

NARRATION

Rosco's dream began when he was a boy.

Rosco McGlashan

At age 12 Donald Campbell came across here and about 1964 and set the world land speed record. And like a young bloke at the time I turned to my mates I said 'that was pretty neat' but I said 'my car's going to go a heap faster than that' and obviously they all laughed at me. A week later I quit school and put the age up to 16 and went working with the desire to become the world's fastest man.

Television voiceover

Conditions seemed perfect as the Bluebird crew made ready for what looked to be the big day.

Donald Campbell

The course is much smoother, the boys have done a first class job on that. They've got rid of most of the bumps. There's still one or two left. Which of course is negligible at 200 miles per hour but assume fairly gigantic proportions at four.

NARRATION

Donald Campbell's car Bluebird created a sensation as it raced along the salt flats of Lake Eyre in South Australia.

Rosco McGlashan

That was a huge thing it was bigger than Ben Hur. Man hadn't landed on the moon at that stage and for a guy to drive a car at 403 miles an hour or 647 kilometres was a mammoth achievement.

NARRATION

647 kilometres an hour may have been quick in '64, but Rosco himself has already driven faster, in his earlier car Aussie Invader III.

Rosco McGlashan

We actually took this car faster than any car in the world. At the time we ran back in '96 we took it to 1026 kilometres an hour when the world record was 1019. But the big thing with the land-speed record is that you've got to do two runs, it's the average of both runs, so you've got to go both directions.

NARRATION

But that day a second run was impossible because of water on the track, so frustratingly Rosco postponed for a month.

Rosco McGlashan

Meanwhile the Poms went out with their twin-engine car and run 1227 kilometres an hour so made this poor baby here redundant. It's very, very scary when you first sit in the car and you think 'oh what am I doing here, this is absolute crazy' but once you start getting a couple of runs on the board it becomes quite easy.

NARRATION

This car is powered by a Mirage jet engine, so it has a massive hole in the front, the air intake, and that requires special design attention.

Dr Graham Phillips

What's this here?

Rosco McGlashan

Usually all the girls ask that. That's what's called a sonic probe. It's the extreme front of the car it's the first part of the car to generate a shock wave off the end of that. And it sends that shock wave out and around the outside of the intake to that it doesn't go down the intake.

NARRATION

For any jet, if a shock wave gets into the engine it could stall. So for his new car Rosco wants to move on from jets to rocket power.

In essence a rocket engine is very simple. Exhaust gases push out the back and the rocket reacts by moving in the opposite direction. It's that old law of physics, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. The same principle is involved when a gun jolts back in the opposite direction after a bullet fires out.

What will be fired out of Rosco's rocket engine will be the explosive result of fuel being injected through those holes, along with oxidiser, hydrogen peroxide. The mixture will spontaneously ignite, blasting out the back, propelling the car forwards.

Rosco McGlashan

Maximum power in five milliseconds so it's just a controlled explosion.

NARRATION

Rosco's car is really just a rocket with a seat in it. In the nose cone are the front wheels and the computers needed to run the car. Behind that is the hydrogen peroxide tank. It's four and a half metres long and holds a massive two and a half tonnes of oxidant. Then there's a smaller tank of compressed nitrogen. Its job is to push the hydrogen peroxide through to the rocket engine. Behind the driver is another tank of nitrogen to push the fuel. And behind that, the fuel itself, a biofuel.

But there are challenges to building a car that can speed to 1600 kph. We know that when a plane breaks the sound barrier it generates a shock wave, the sonic boom.

Rosco McGlashan

With an aircraft the shock wave goes sideways above and below but obviously with the ground only that far away the shock wave is going to intensify and what happens with these vehicles is it gets a massive pressure wave under the front of the car and what it can actually do it intensifies so much it can pick the back of the car up and actually tip the car over.

NARRATION

That V shape underneath is to help deal with the shock wave. If the car does flip Rosco insists the roll cage will keep him safe.

Rosco McGlashan

The roll cage is very, very strong, its designed if the car tips up at a thousand mile an hour this car can actually run for a long, long time just on the strength of that, on its roof if it had to.

Dr Graham Phillips

You might be able to break the record upside down.

Rosco McGlashan

I hope not. That's not a record. We've got to keep four wheels on the ground at all time to qualify for the record.

NARRATION

The wheels present a big challenge. They'll turn at an incredible 167 times every second, these ones would just fall apart. At that speed the centrifugal force on each wheel's outer edge is around 300 g's. The team are currently designing a carbon composite wheel that could cope with that. Not surprisingly perhaps, like for Donald Campbell, fear of death is not a factor for Rosco.

Rosco McGlashan

Yeah it's a dangerous activity, but what isn't dangerous these days? You could die going to work just as easily as you could driving this out on a lake somewhere. The first time I light the wick on this car I'm going to be absolutely terrified I'll probably have to be on valium to get in the car.

NARRATION

The main thing that stands between Rosco and his childhood dream is money. If he could raise three million dollars right now he could be the fastest man on the planet in 12 months' time.